Blood of Vipers (2 page)

But as he rose to his feet, the distant bark
of a dog
reached his ears. A moment later, a second barking dog, and then
a third. Cal
broke into a limping trot. A moment later and all doubt was
gone. The dogs
barked constantly now, and he caught the shout of one man
calling to another.
They had found his trail.

Cal wasn’t going to make it easy. He reached
a stream and
stripped off his boots and socks. Icy water rushed over his feet
and ankles as
he stumbled up the streambed, trying not to cut his feet on
sharp stones. He
continued upstream for maybe a hundred yards before he scrambled
out of the
water where a series of cascades spilled over rocky ledges on
the hillside. He
entered the water again about ten minutes later.

In spite of these efforts, the barking dogs
continued their
pursuit. The shouting grew louder, and soon Cal could pick out
individual
words. One man—presumably the officer in charge of the
pursuit—had a strident,
ringing tone. Angry, aggressive. Cal didn’t speak a word of
German, but he had
no problems picturing the man, a striding, strutting Führer
type.

The hill kept climbing and Cal was getting
tired. His ankle
throbbed and the brush crackled and snapped alarmingly as he
fought his way up.
A shout at his back as he regained the trees.

Still an hour to go until nightfall. If he
could only hold
out.

He reached the top of the hill. To his
surprise, the woods
thinned, and what he’d taken for piles of rocks turned out to be
a ruined
castle, its main tower and keep still overlooking the plains
below. What Cal
saw when he looked down from the hill was like a vision of the
end of the
world.

The sun was falling in the west, a brilliant
golden red
sunset, like the entire horizon was on fire. The moon was up in
the sky,
already glowing orange and wreathed in smoke rings. Columns of
smoke rose to
the east, and the distant roll of thunder continued unabated.
How far was that?
Twenty miles? Even closer—perhaps five miles away—a village lay
covered in
smoke, only the church steeple poking above the pall. Several
farmhouses in the
fields beyond the village were burning as well. People and carts
and horses
crowded the road leading from the village.

One of the dogs started howling and Cal
looked over his
shoulder to see the brush rustling. What possessed these men to
pursue him into
the woods and up the hill while the Third Reich lay thrashing
and dying below
them? Didn’t these idiots have a last stand to make somewhere?

Cal made a run for the castle. A low wall
stretched in front
of him, crumbling, hundred-year-old trees sprouting from the
ruins. As he
launched himself to hurdle the wall, his bad ankle gave way. He
fell over the
top of the wall instead and only a well-placed branch kept him
from smashing
face down into the rubble. He grabbed the branch as he fell. His
sprained ankle
burned when he struggled to his feet a moment later, and refused
to hold his
weight.

The castle wall stood a good fifty feet away
still. He’d
never make it. A glance into the tree that had kept him from
falling gave him
another idea. Cal hoisted himself onto the same branch that had
caught his
fall. He climbed until he was at least twenty feet off the
ground, then took
out his Colt .45 from the canvas holster on the left side of his
vest, and
froze.

Seconds later, the first two dogs came out,
German shepherds
on the end of leashes, snarling and barking. Two soldiers
emerged on the other
end of the leashes. They took one glance at the castle, and then
held back the
dogs, which were going nuts. Five more soldiers joined them
moments later,
these ones armed with submachine guns. Another soldier with a
dog, and then an
officer. Even before he opened his mouth to snap a command, Cal
knew this was
the one he’d heard earlier. He wore a brush-like mustache in
emulation of his
leader, and carried himself with a casual arrogance.

Cal’s hand tightened on the pistol.
Come
on, Little
Hitler. I’ve got one specially for you.

One shot for Little Hitler, then the barrel
to his own
temple. They’d only kill him anyway. He could see it in their
postures, in the
rage on their faces. They couldn’t hold back the Russians,
couldn’t stop the
four American divisions assaulting Munich, but they’d be happy
to take out
their frustrations on one downed American pilot.

The officer gave a command, and the dog
handlers dropped the
German shepherds to their haunches. Instantly, they turned from
snarling,
drooling hunters to simple dogs. Cal thought about his own dog,
Rex, and felt a
twinge of pain at the thought he’d never see the dog again.
Silly beast. Not
much of a retriever. Oh, he’d leap into the pond joyfully
enough, but he never
brought back a duck without giving it a good chew-over first.
The old man
called him the Fleabag, said that Cal’s sister had ruined him as
a hunting dog
by feeding him from the table.

Cal didn’t care. All he wanted right now was
to see the
tongue flying as Rex raced through the cattails and took a
joyous leap into the
water to chew up another duck. Rex would be older now, almost
seven, but Cal
bet he still had a bit of
yee-haw
left in him.

The German soldiers moved to flank the
castle. If only they
were alone, they might pass directly below him without ever
looking up. Dark
would fall. He would get away.

But the dogs were straining, whining now.
They knew. They
smelled him, and one was even looking up into the trees. The
handlers brought
them forward, slowly and cautiously. Only moments now and they
wouldn’t be able
to hold back. They’d bark around his tree and the Germans would
find him.

The German shepherds pulled at their leashes,
and as the
first one reached the base of Cal’s tree it couldn’t hold back
any longer. It
let out a howl and then all three of the dogs flew into a frenzy
of barking.

The officer turned from where he was using
another tree to
shield himself from the castle. His head leaned out, a
suspicious look crossing
his face. He lifted his eyes to the tree, even as Cal pointed
his pistol at the
man’s head. Their eyes met and Cal permitted himself a smile.

And all hell broke loose.

Gunfire erupted from the castle. The officer
threw himself
to the ground. The man by his side lifted his submachine gun to
fire back, but
a spray of gunfire caught him across the middle. The other
Germans had their
weapons up in an instant, returning fire. The officer threw
himself over a
downed tree and popped up to squeeze off shots with a sidearm.

Two more Germans took refuge behind a pile of
rubble,
supporting each other as they fired and tossed grenades toward
the castle.

Another pair got caught in the open and went
down, arms
flailing. The final three men tried to reach the two behind the
rubble, but a
bullet slammed into one, and the other two ran for the hillside
instead, even
as the others yelled at them to stop. A bullet caught one man in
the leg and he
went down with a cry. The other escaped over the edge of the
hill and into the
brush. One of the dogs fell to the ground in the crossfire, and
lay whimpering.

Half a dozen men poured out of the ruined
castle, and three
more came around the other side. They were armed with carbines,
submachine
guns, and pistols, and dressed in equally mismatched clothes:
Russian uniforms
with German belts, or Russian army trousers with nondescript tan
shirts. One
man looked like a Polish cavalry officer. Bearded, clean-shaven,
and
stubble-faced in turn. The Germans killed one of them and then
it settled into
a firefight. The two Germans behind the rubble seemed well-armed
and one man
recovered the body of a dead companion by dragging him back by
the ankle.

Cal had a clean shot at the pair of Germans,
but he was
reluctant to reveal himself to the wild men who’d poured out of
the castle. To
his eyes they looked like a mixture of escaped POWs, Russian
deserters, and
Polish partisans. Maybe they’d welcome a downed American pilot,
or maybe they’d
put a bullet to his head.

He had decided to shoot at the Germans and
take his chances
when two men leaned out of the castle tower and heaved grenades
down. One fell
short, but the other hit the top of the rubble and bounced into
the middle of
the two Germans. Too late, they saw what it was and tried to
fling themselves
to safety. The grenade exploded. The men lay still.

The air was silent. Cal didn’t move, afraid
to so much as
jiggle a branch. If Little Hitler was alive behind the downed
tree, he didn’t
show himself. Cautiously, the men moved forward from the castle.
One of the men
gave orders in Russian. He was a big, hairy man with a black
beard streaked
with gray, and a vaguely Turkish look about him.

Cal picked up the gist of it.
Find that
last man and
finish him.

But when they got to the downed tree, they
shouted back and
when they returned, it was clear that Little Hitler had escaped.

Two of the dogs were dead, but a third lay
whimpering,
apparently uninjured, but unable to move with its leash tangled
around its dead
master’s arm. To Cal’s surprise, the hairy man bent, let the dog
sniff his
hand, petted him with a few affectionate words, and then
released him from the
leash and shooed him away. The German shepherd slunk off with
its tail between
its legs. The men walked around, kicking at dead Germans and
rifling through
their pockets, sharing out weapons, ammunition, boots, wrist
watches.

A moan caught the attention of the partisans.
It was the
young German who had made a run for it and taken a bullet in the
leg. Somehow,
they’d forgotten about him in the chaos of the battle. Cal had,
too.

They dragged him back and heaved him next to
his dead
companions. More men came out of the castle, until there were
more than twenty
in all. They prodded the injured soldier with boots, pulled him
up by his hair
and let him drop again.

The boy grimaced at the rough treatment and
pleaded with
them to let him live. Or maybe he was trying to tell them that
his mother was
Polish, or his family had always been against the war.

It didn’t matter. They were laughing, jabbing
him with the
butts of their guns, yanking off his boots, kicking at his
injury, while the
young man cried in pain and increasing desperation. Watching
from the tree,
Cal’s heart pounded, not just in sympathy for the boy, but in
fear for his own
life if one of them looked up and saw him perched above their
heads.

They stripped the soldier naked, kicking and
jabbing. It was
all nasty, mean fun, and no doubt it would end with a bullet to
the head. And
why not? Hadn’t the Germans done the same thing to countless
Poles and Russians
who’d fallen into their hands?

And then one of the men found a photo tucked
into the pocket
of the boy’s shirt. He passed it around for the others to see,
and their voices
raised, their jeers turned to hisses and curses. It was a photo
of Adolph
Hitler, and even signed, from the look of it.

They pinned the boy down like farmers holding
a pig to be
slaughtered and he was squealing and bucking like an animal,
too, eyes rolled
back in his head. The leader drew a hunting knife from the
sheath at his belt
and stroked the blade with his thumb. When he knelt, he pointed
the blade at
the boy’s groin and said something that made the other men
laugh.

Cal closed his eyes, horrified. The screaming
started
moments later. It only lasted a minute, maybe even less. It was
enough.

When Cal opened his eyes, they’d tossed the
boy into a pile
with the other corpses and the leader was wiping his knife on
the pant leg of a
dead German soldier. The mob calmed down and the leader gave
them more orders.
As nightfall finally, mercifully arrived, the men set about
butchering one of
the dogs. They carried haunches of meat back into the castle,
and the smoke of
a fire and the smell of roasting meat soon drifted down from the
crumbling
tower.

Cal was feeling faint with hunger, and so he
pulled out the
Logan Bar from his emergency vest and cut off slices with his
knife. Blasted D
ration, a barely palatable hunk of chocolate and oats, with just
enough sugar
to keep it from triggering the gag reflex, but not enough to get
rid of the
bitter flavor. Good thing, too—if it was tasty, he’d have eaten
it the first
time his stomach grumbled at the end of a long mission.

The thunder of artillery grew louder in the
distance. The
northern horizon was now glowing, too, and a giant arc of red
curved from west
to east. Dry, powdery flecks fell from the sky and the air
tasted like ash. Or
maybe that was the D ration.

Light flared to the north, followed several
seconds later by
an enormous boom. When the Russian sentinel turned to watch, Cal
holstered his
pistol and dropped to the ground.

Inch by inch he crawled forward on his belly,
until he
reached the safety of the darkened woods below. When he was out
of eyesight, he
rose to his feet, winced at the aching muscles and the wobbly,
injured ankle,
and began the long climb down from the hillside, anxious to put
as much
distance as possible between himself and the men at the castle.

The thunder of bombs and artillery and
rockets continued
unabated, and Cal was grateful. Anything to blot out the screams
of the dying
German boy, still ringing in his head.

Later that night, Cal came out of the woods
and was creeping
past a barn when a woman screamed from inside.